World Amateur Championship 1984

This year's tournament, held in Tokyo in April, was run for the
first time on the Swiss system. Western players may find this
unremarkable, but it was quite a radical step for the Japanese, whose
tournaments are run almost exclusively on some sort of knockout basis.

Since it was hard to explain to the press what was going on, the
draw was in fact fixed to force the Japanese and Chinese players to meet
in the last round, thereby providing a focus for publicity. This ploy
turned out to be a bit of a waste of time, however, since the Chinese
player, Wang Qun, had the tournament sewn up by the end of the sixth
(and penultimate) round.

Down among the rabbits, the system was widely acclaimed for
producing a much more equitable draw than in previous years. In my own
case, for example, I was able to recover from losing my first game to
Kan from Hong Kong to finish in a respectable (very respectable - Ed.)
fifth place.

None of the representatives from the strong Eastern countries lost
to the rest of the world. But European champion Janusz Kraszek killed a
big group of Wang's stones, and they might well have stayed dead had he
not been in byoyomi. Ronald Schlemper also had good chances against the
Korean, Yoo.

Sooner or later the West will start to produce a real challenge.

In between games, those who finished early enough had their games
analysed by the resident 9 Dans, Sakai Takeshi, Honda Kunihasa, and the
ever-present Otake Hideo, whose genuine enthusiasm for amateur Go and
the people who play it has added enormously to the value of the Amateur
Go Championships since their inception.